Someone really thought this was a good idea. My comments in red because socialism

Oh, Johnny.

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​

I hate writing this because I am a fan and proponent of women’s sports.

You do not have to write this. You are not passive observer in what’s about to happen. You are a participant. As am I, for the moment.

Big fucking deal that you’re a self-proclaimed fan and proponent of women’s sports, chief. You’re a GD paid sports columnist. Your lede here is “I do the bare minimum for my job.” It is painstakingly accurate.

Minimum support of women athletes having been proclaimed, all manner of sins can now be cloaked. You’re a regular Frodo Baggins, Smallwood. One cock ring to rule them all, one cock ring to bind them.

I understand why the members of the United States women’s hockey team have threatened to boycott next month’s International Ice Hockey Federation women’s world championships over a wages-and-supportdisputewith USA Hockey, the governing body for ice hockey in the United States.

See, I get that you’ve know said this but I get the feeling that you’re gonna say a bunch of shit in just a minute that will make readers wonder “Does he?”

Still, I cannot side with the players in their demands that USA Hockey pay them an annual salary of $68,000, plus child care, maternity leave and other benefits.

He CANNOT. It’s impossible, you see. All the rest of us that side with the players here in their negotiation for some bare modicum of professional salary, we’re doing the impossible, you see. We’re the Big Fish of third-wave feminism or something.

What are you going to do with your newly recognized super powers? Me? I’m going to grow weed out of my coffee cup using mind bullets. Beat that!

I agree with the players that it is pathetic that they are only guaranteed $1,000 a month for six months leading to an Olympics.

I agree that USA Hockey’s offer to raise pay to $3,000 a month prior to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea won’t make that much of a difference.

I fucking hate fucking sports fucking writers. This is classic bullshit. An industry that rewards jabroni (pl.) who stand up on the take less traveled; the take that seems, dare I say, impossible based on the facts available.

It’s like Woodsmall thinks recognizing the basic facts before taking the conclusion a different way gives him some sort of credibility here. It does the opposite. But the players are asking USA Hockey to pay them as if they are full-time employees, and I agree with the organization’s stance that it doesn’t do that for players – male or female.

Up until recently, much of the white collar industry of the U.S. has built itself on the work of unpaid interns. If you’re Darren Rovell or even Wood Smalljohn, you probably point to the availability of internships that don’t pay as the logical first step for any entrepreneuring young professional.

Unpaid or underpaid work is foundational for the continuation of centers of economic power, regardless of the whether the result is fair for labor. Consideration of how economic power metes out the scraps from the proverbial table to the dogs working the floors has some value in assessing fairness, as does the question: “can workers actually fucking eat?”​That USA Hockey “doesn’t do that” is all well and good, but it has no place in this argument. Of course they don’t do that. That’s why women are striking. The centralized monopoly of American hockey has no interest in paying any fucking body as a full-time employee until it is made to care.

Since the International Olympic Committee changed its rules in 1986 to allow professional athletes to participate, there has been a growing misconception that all athletes who compete at events like that should be paid as if they are professional athletes.

The belief that women should be “paid” here is not a misconception, it’s a GD belief, you ornery toad fucker. The fact that USA Hockey *makes money* off these athletes suggests that they should be paid.

That simply is not how it works.

THAT IS WHY WE ARE HERE. THAT IT IS "NOT HOW IT WORKS" IS THE WHOLE REASON THE WOMEN'S TEAM IS STRIKING. CHRIST.

Athletes are compensated for competing in events the Olympics or a world championship based on the financial power of the sport, the country and the governing bodies of a sport in a country.

They’re compensated based on whether the organizing body chooses to pay them. Market factors don’t magically create a contract-for-compensation when there’s a certain profit margin achieved. There are choices here.

It’s misleading to say men get paid millions of dollars to represent the USA at the Olympics so women should get the $68,000 they are demanding. To repeat, USA Hockey does not pay the men millions of dollars. It doesn’t even pay them $68,000.

This is hot steaming bullshit.

The question of “should women hockey players get paid” is not answered in reference to the fact that men get paid. It’s answered in reference to whether USA Hockey actually values having the best women players compete. If they do, they will shell out the cash here, and they should. If they don’t, at least we can see an honest answer here. Hell, we’re already seeing it.

Referring to the fact men get paid by the NHL is a red herring. Men’s hockey in America has received support from USA Hockey – support when they provided negligible infrastructure for women to play – for generations. As it turned out, that support did not take the form of employment contracts because the IOC said players had to be amateurs. Fast-forward generations and USAH doesn’t need to pay players on the Men’s team because these players already make good money. Fair enough.

While USAH was supporting the talent pool that allows its best players to get their payday, Women’s Hockey globally had to fight for any recognition by the national governing bodies. It’s been less than 20 years since it was even part of the Winter Olympics. Unlike the Men’s game, the Women’s team hasn’t had the generations of support growing the game into a top-class money making enterprise. USAH has that role to fill now, and they should. Hiding behind “we don’t pay the men” is fuckery. They don’t because there’s no need to; they don’t pay the Women’s team players because they don’t want to.

If the men want to get paid, too? Let them negotiate for their own damn selves.

Either USA Hockey gives a shit or it doesn't.

In 1998, 12 years after the IOC allowed professional athletes, the NHL decided it would benefit from interrupting its regular season and sending its players to the Olympics. Though they still haven’t won shit at the senior team level. USA Hockey certainly benefited from having NHL players at the Olympics, but the players’ multi-million-dollar salaries come from their contracts with NHL teams. In the United States, governing bodies such as USA Hockey, do control the professional leagues.

Unfortunately, there is no high-paying professional hockey league for women.

Not that the ladies here are asking for a “high-paying” league to be financed by USAH here. They’re looking for a middle-class income to play at the sport’s highest level.

The National Women’s Hockey League is a four-team league with a salary cap of $270,000 per team. Players get a share of the home gate after 500 tickets are sold.

Does anyone think Teenyrod here actually gives a shit about the NWHL? A quick search of his bylines suggests this is actually the first time he's written about women's hockey. Not that this matters because he's totally a big proponent and fan of women's sports. Just not this one, in particular, which is why he's here to correct the record on why these athletes should just learn to eat their effort for breakfast.

Because they can’t make a living wage as full-time professional hockey players, the players want USA Hockey to supplement their income so they can live as full-time hockey players.

No: because they provide a valuable labor service to USAH, they would like compensation.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the median household income in the United States for 2016 was $53,889. DID YOU REALLY GO THE CENSUS BUREAU, FUCKBOI? Basically, the players want USA Hockey to pay them nearly $15,000 more than the median income, plus benefits, for a nine-day tournament once a year except for an Olympic year.

NAHHHHHHHHH.

They want what they want. They are negotiating. It’s their bargaining position and they’re bargaining with their own participation in a tournament that I assume is one of the highlights of their careers. THIS. IS. THEIR. RIGHT.

Professional sports are businesses, not charities.

Wait. Either this is a professional sport or not. If it’s a professional sport, then these people deserve to get paid at least as much as the senior manager of some local HVAC outfit.

An athlete’s income is directly related to how much revenue he/she can generate, individually, or as part of a team and league.

This is another piece of fuckery. Athletes are paid the bare minimum that an owner chooses.

Choice.

Revenue-generation may go into it, but all you have to do is look at NFL player salaries vs. NFL revenue to know that players are boned to the extent ownership wishes to bone them. It’s the same here.

Choice.

Either USAH cares.

Or it doesn’t.

WNBA players make a fraction of the minimum salary of NBA players because the women’s game only generates a fraction of the revenue that the men’s game does.

This is a great example because the WNBA started as a way to build the game of women’s hoops and pay women a decent wage to play. It has never been a great revenue generator, but ownership decided – chooses – to give a shit and keep it going. Call it charity, call it optimistic pseudo-capitalism, whatever. It’s a choice to give a shit and try to create something that hasn’t been here before.

Conversely, female tennis players successfully demanded equal prize money at Grand Slam tournaments because their competition is as profitable as the men’s.

Nope. This was but one of the justifications for Grand Slam payouts to be equal; also included in the conversation was equal effort and, yes, the cynical cyclical impact of arguing that less popular sports deserve less funding when less funded sports are always less popular.

Unfortunately for the women hockey players, they can’t even make an argument like the one that women soccer players have made in their dispute with the United States Soccer Federation.

Although they’ve cherry-picked the numbers in their claim for equal pay, the women soccer players do generate significant money for the USSF when they host friendlies and participate in the FIFA World Cup.

Cherry-picking arguments? You mean like referring to revenue-generation as the only factor in athlete compensation?

Or like making points in a vacuum whilst ignoring the historical nuances of misogyny-in-sport and its impacts on the financial viability of a sport featuring women?

USAH brought in $41.9 million in 2014, a year when the U.S. Women’s team won a silver medal. They generate income. Players looking to take a fraction of that is a non-starter? FOH.

Women athletes work just as hard and train as hard as their male counterparts. In a perfect world, they would be paid like their male counterparts.

Eat my increasingly shriveled balls, you feckless human earworm. The world doesn’t get perfect by accident. People choose to be the change they want to see, or they sit behind their word processor spinning some ridiculous yarn about how women totally deserve more money except not actually.

But it isn’t a perfect world and most athletes – male and female - don’t get rich or even earn a living wage for competing in their chosen sport.

THERE IT IS.

First of all, no one is looking to get “rich” here.

Second of all, Woodslittle here finally gets to the point. After all of the pontificating on how much he really does support women’s sports, he drops the hammer.

Tough shit, ladies. The world is hard and y’all can get fucked if you deign to ask for enough money to survive.

Dear God, what a C-O-C-K Cock statement.

Is the best you got - “ladies, life is hard?” This is your point? The literal last line of your thesis here? In what fucking universe do you live in, Monsieur Tiny Forest, where you think any woman needs reminding that the world isn’t perfect and doesn’t give a shit about them? This is, guaranteed, the thing that virtually all women understand to be true without needing a reminder from a walking talking "well actually" reply.

Where the fuck do you get off, you dirty ass of a feral cat, thinking you’re providing some epiphany that settles the debate here?

Women’s Hockey Team: “We want to get paid a living wage.”

USAH, looking up from a blog written by James Little Dick: “Well, you see, he brings up a good point. Life isn’t perfect. Now fuck off and make me a sandwich.”

It's the Sabres offseason - when is it not, frankly - and when it's the Sabres offseason, one can rest assured that they'll have a daily menu of trash takes on which to dine if, as it suits you, your preferred meal includes equal parts "this guy took 7 years to graduate from high school" and "this guy spends too much time on bar stools in the City of Tonawanda." Granted, I have no clue whether either of these specific character traits apply to Richard Spalding, the author of the offending collection of nonsense words and punctuation marks that drew my attention today, but the fact that a reasonable reader cannot discern whether "failed sophomore year three times" and "Tonawanda's Skip Bayless" are accurate descriptions of Spalding is telling in and of itself.

These takes were so hot, honestly, I figure Harry Caray is planning to hold his show from right in their center next week. Like the saying goes, when life gives you trashy ass lemon opinions, you gotta make some trashy ass FJM lemonade.

(Note that @2ITB already did one on this and it's basically the clean and polite version of many of the opinions I share, written in a manner - i.e. non-sarcastically and entirely calmly - that I have the inability to mirror every time I dial up weebly [dot] com. You should probably read his stuff before mine, always, as a general rule of thumb.)

The godforsaken text of this godforsaken target of my early-onset mid-life crisis male rage is below; my analysis (read: dumbfuckery) is in bold and sometimes in all caps at such moments as may tickle my fat ass fancy.

[Tagline:] The Buffalo Sabres may not have given up much for this kid’s rights, but anything is too much when it comes to a situation like this.

Does the kid, like, not know how to play hockey? Murder someone? Rape someone? Is he a big fucking asshole? Are you a big fucking asshole? We already know that I am, but just saying - what. a. lede.

Certainly we are in for a treat (we are certainly not).

Not to belabor the point, but wow. The line in the sand is a (Richon) stark shot to the heart. Anything is too much. We do not negotiate with terrorists. This is not a game (it is a game), it is serious business. ANYTHING. IS. TOO. MUCH.

Pro Tip: writing about sports in terms of ultimatums and the like is the first sign you've failed as a human. If Jimmy Vesey isn't, like, one of the villains from 'Preacher' or some suburban Massachusetts jihadist, this is all going to be an logical let down, Rich.

All right: I’ve taken a few days to sleep on the trade that sent a third-round pick to Nashville just so the Buffalo Sabres could acquire the rights to Jimmy Vesey.

YOU SLEPT FOR DAYS, ME JELLY.

I’ve read FanSided NHL Division Director Tim Redinger’s thoughts on why it should not bother fans that the Sabres gave up a third-round pick in order to sit down with this kid.

Honestly, if you needed to read anything at all to get a take on why fans should not be bothered by the Sabres giving up one of four Third Round draft picks to have even a marginally better chance at landing a player who was drafted in the Third Round four years ago and has only gotten better since, I don't know.

Also, please read other blogs and websites, too. Like, say, www.deargodwhyussports.com. There's a piece up there right now on why anyone bent out of shape about the Jimmy Vesey trade are mutated blends of a fuckstick salad and cream cheese.

​I’ve tried to justify this gamble by entertaining thoughts of the Buffalo Sabres parading Lord Stanley’s Cup through the streets of Buffalo in a grand victory parade.

Gambles imply risk and I fucking dare you to point to the thing that the Sabres have risked here. It's like saying I have undertaken a risk by trading my Honda CRV (come at me) for another Honda CRV while, at the same time, my garage ALREADY HAS THREE OTHER HONDA CRVs TO SPARE. Christ.

While you're at it, I fucking dare you to point to the Third Round prospect in this year's draft who you'd want more than Jimmy Vesey.

You "entertained thoughts of a Stanley Cup Parade" which is a nice turn of phrase, I grant you, especially when it's utility is covering up the weirdness of your need to wrack your brain to justify the Sabres trying to get a fucking Hobey Baker winner who went 24/22 in 33 games for Harvard, a school that has not had such a winner since nineteenfuckingeightynine (the last time Harvard won the NCAA, mind you; Harvard's team this year was not nearly as good, making Vesey's achievement a GD ACHIEVEMENT).

I have done all that and more . . . and I still cannot shake the feeling that the Buffalo Sabres have made a mistake by making a play for this kid.

Look: Jimmy Vesey is a talented player. Could be a great kid. Either you have done zero google searching on this or you are ignoring the results. He is a great kid. Ostensibly. Full stop. It’s entirely understandable why Sabres fans are dreaming of a Vesey – Jack Eichel – Sam Reinhart line. I get it – two Hobey Baker Award winners on the same line, alongside Reinhart, who had almost as good a 2015-16 season as Eichel did. Everyone’s thinking about Buffalo becoming the next city to pull a Cleveland and bring a major sport championship into the 716.

I realize Facebook and twitter were awash with "ok now can it be our turn" after the Cavs won Sunday, but a Sabres Cup win would not be "pulling a Cleveland" anymore than your website can be deemed to have "pulled a DGWU" simply by writing about Buffalo sports. Besides, any Sabres fan worth a damn is always dreaming of the Sabres "pulling a Buffalo" (see?) and breaking the goose egg out of the Championship win column. Cleveland's win has not appreciable impact on those dreams - though certainly on the frequent expression of them for about 24 hours after Sunday night; nor did their win have any appreciable impact on our willingness to use our brains and assess this Vesey trade for what it is. We did not become idiot and impatient assholes after the LeBron kept his promise to his hometown. You're thinking of yourself.

That’s all well and good, but have we all forgotten about Jonathan Drouin, the kid who tried to strong-arm the Tampa Bay Lightning into trading him this season? No one forgot about Drouin. It simply did not occur to us that his situation was relevant to our assessment of Vesey because it's not relevant to our assessment of Vesey and also we are not insistent on being wrong. I seem to recall a number of Sabres fans remarking that they would not want a kid like Drouin playing for the Sabres, (what number of Sabres fans? 5? 10? Less than 20? I want a fucking number because I want to tell them all to go fuck themselves as well) because of his attempts to force his way out of a situation he didn’t like. When a young player such as Drouin tries to play hardball, despite the fact that he really has not earned the right to dictate the terms of his employment just yet, that player comes across as entitled, the reason why people feel the need to remind everyone that there is no “I” in “team.”

People feel the need to remind everyone that there is no "I" in team because Americans love cliches and are also terrible at spelling.

People applauded Lightning GM Steve Yzerman for refusing to be manipulated by Drouin and his agent, and in the long run, being banished to Tampa Bay’s AHL affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch, and then suspended for refusing to report, wound up being just the kick in the ass that Drouin needed, as he turned in an inspiring performance in Tampa Bay’s playoff run.

Drouin violated the terms of his contract. Vesey exercised his rights under the CBA and had, you guessed it, not signed a contract. Comparing these two situations is such an obnoxious stretch of logic that I can only assume Rich here had already begun his tour de force on why a hot dog is not a sandwich based on the fact that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside.

One has nothing to do with the other.

So if people were turned off by Drouin’s power play and supportive of Yzerman’s refusal to bow down to a still-unproven player, why are they suddenly onboard the Jimmy Vesey bandwagon?

Because the situations are so starkly different that sentient beings who like Sabres hockey have come to a conclusion so confounding as to confuse this fucking fungus.

Please don’t tell me the circumstances are different here they are – if anything, what Vesey is doing is worse (it's not), because the kid has not played one damn game as a professional hockey player yet (that's the relevant metric? Huh), and he is already on a power trip (explicitly permitted by the CBA and implicitly permitted by the Predators' failure to lock him into a deal before this year). At the very least, Drouin could boast of being the third-overall pick in he draft, and that he had been a good soldier in his first year in Tampa Bay (he, however, could not boast any legal right to his course of action, unlike Jimmy Vesey). It’s still a BS argument, mind you – but it’s leaps and bounds better than what Vesey is doing (except in the sense that it was illegal and he was never going to get away with it, while Vesey already did).

And don’t tell me that college players skipping the draft and becoming UFAs is a trend that we all have to get used to (You know what? I won't tell you that! Because Jimmy Vesey didn't skip the draft!) – this doesn’t happen in any other professional sport in North America (not to my knowledge, that is) (lmgtfy.com) and it doesn’t have to happen in the NHL. The league and the players union need to get together and find a way to keep this sort of power play from happening, but in the meantime, teams such as the Buffalo Sabres need to stop rewarding young players who have done nothing at the professional level from enjoying a perk that is not even enjoyed by players who have put in three years!

Man, fuck the Sabres for wanting to "reward" a player, i.e. sign him to a contract delineating an agreement to exchange money for hockey playing, when that player exercised his rights under the document governing player contracts. The Sabres suck.

Also, the Sabres have to "stop rewarding young players who have done nothing at the professional level from enjoying a perk that is not even enjoyed by players who have put in three years?" They've done this before? No? This is just rhetorical nonsense aimed at inciting those portions of the fan base eager to throw shade at anything this club does? The author of these words has the insight of a jar of marmalade?

Fish in a barrel fam.

Think about that for a moment: Jack Eichel, who played 81 games in his rookie season, will not be able to enjoy the perks of being an RFA until the end of the 2017-18 season. If we assume that the Sabres sign Eichel to a long-term contract (say five years or longer) in the summer of 2018, when will Eichel be able to enjoy the freedom of being a UFA – 2023? At the earliest?

Oh, so this is about equity in player freedom? Not freedom to exercise one's contractual right s like Vesey did, mind you, but Jack's rights. Because reasons.

And Sabres fans are okay going after a college kid who is demanding the perks of being a UFA NOW? I mean, yes, since him being a UFA and also a pretty good hockey player means he could be a Buffalo Sabre rather than a Nashville Predator. All because he might help the Sabres become a playoff team? YES. BECAUSE OF THAT. THAT IS WHY WE ARE HERE YOU TROGLODYTE. Drouin had the same potential, and most fans would not have touched him with a 20-foot pole. Application denied. Cheering that the Sabres might convince Vesey to play for Buffalo is extremely hypocritical, and I just can’t get excited over this. Try harder, mutant. Or don't. Whatever. Take a walk.

I understand that even as a UFA, Jimmy Vesey will only be allowed to sign an entry-level contract, but this whole thing stinks to me, even if it is allowed by the current CBA. In one sentence you breezed right through the two primary reasons this should not bother anyone who cares to make proper use of one's god-given faculties. One sentence to brush aside the context that is inescapable in its ability to make Rich Spalding look like a peal-clutching troll. Also, as an aside, Vesey's choice - as per my own internet reading - means that he can't burn a year on his entry-level deal, something that Nashville could have done for him. So, less money in other words. POWER PLAY. Vesey may well become the next Jack Eichel, but I have a really difficult time endorsing his power play just months after condemning Drouin for trying to pull a stunt that is incredibly similar. Similar in that they're both hockey player; different in all other relevant respects. If NHL teams such as the Buffalo Sabres continue to allow players like Vesey to skip the draft (which Vesey didn't, god why) and dictate where they begin their careers, then yes, this will be a trend moving forward. It doesn’t have to be, though, and it doesn’t feel right applauding Buffalo’s pursuit of a player simply because “It’s my team.” Fuck you, it's not your team anymore. You're off the island. It wasn’t right when Drouin did it months ago, it wasn’t right when Eric Lindros refused to play for the Quebec Nordiques way back in 1991, and it’s not right that Jimmy Vesey has strong-armed his way out of Nashville and is looking to become a free agent on August 15.

HAHASHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA LINDROSS OH GOD THAT'S PERFECT. Nothing says well-thought-out, researched and written like repeatedly claiming a 2012 Draftee "skipped the draft," comparing him to a player who did something completely fucking different and who Sabres fans still would have loved getting, and then topping it off with the only other comparison considered relevant - Eric Fucking Lindross. In 1991.

Hey did you know Craig Schaller still exists? The guy who was fired from WHAM for being a racist asshole with no sense of decency? Well, like a bigot moth to a bigot flame, he's BACK, this time to defend the historically beleaguered, down-on-his-luck, the man keeps stomping on his feelings, Donald Sterling.

It really isn't surprising that this prick is back in the news - and by news, I mean DGWU Sports - since he's had such a tremendous career to date, what with being fired and then finding no work apart from guest-blogging here that one time (we paid him in bananas and he didn't get the joke). I imagine that Schaller has been waiting for a week of current events like this since he was let go from the world of radio ... if he's going to be known for a thing, he might as well run with it. And while one might think that I would let this lie - the motherfucker is just sad at this point, why bother? - a good friend of mine once wrote that we have to, in essence, burn the fucking idiots into the ground with our rebuttals. Not to mention it remains the Buffalo sports off-season, I am clueless about drafts, the Mets terrify me, Liverpool even more so, and the Red Bulls aren't worth talking about here until July, so here I am. Let's get after it.